LETTER: No support for Churchill

Sir: While the sculpture of the late Oscar Nemon is rightly praised and admired in this country, particularly his sculpture of our wartime leader Winston Churchill, I hardly see how a 40ft bronze of Churchill on London's South bank would re-instil a sense of the "bulldog spirit" into our nation. The Fine Arts Commission in the Sixties were right to conclude that the project, conceived on such a scale, was "tasteless and overblown".

As we approach the millennium, the British revival must come about by a robust and proud sense of our national identity, embracing change while valuing, but not clinging to, the past. Surely, Nemon Stuart, the sculptor's son, is wrong to conclude that as a nation we do not understand how to capitalise on our nation's past, as the events marking the end of the Second World War this summer, haveproved.